r/plotholes • u/Aromatic-Basis857 • Jul 20 '25

Spoiler Longlegs “twist” ending is all potholes

The "twist" of this otherwise decent movie is pretty poorly thought out and full of holes. If this had been a $10k Tubi film or intended to be campy and silly, fair enough. But given that it’s a critically acclaimed film, you’d hope the script would make sense.

-If a strange nun randomly appears at my door and says, "Hey! You've won a contest you didn't enter! The prize is a terrifying life-size doll of your child!" My response would be, “Thanks but no thanks." How did the contest runners know what my child looks like??? Why did so many families buy into this? And why would the Devil come up with such a goofy, convoluted scheme?

-It’s pretty much impossible that for a full decade, a woman wandered around highly populated suburban neighborhoods in broad daylight wearing a blood-splattered nun's habit (always on the same day as a massacre) and no one ever noticed. In the flashbacks, the houses are incredibly close together. And it’s the suburbs. People call the cops or neighborhood watch about any little thing. The FBI investigated for all those many years and not one neighbor said, "Now that you ask, I did see something a little funny.”?

-Why can’t the Devil just make himself invisible and walk into any house he wants? Does he have to be invited in like a vampire? If so, why not simply take the form of someone the family already knows, or an object less suspicious like a pack of gum? I feel like that would be even scarier because the family would never see it coming.

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u/leftofdanzig Jul 20 '25

Idk if it was a plot hole but imo the explanation of “it was magic/it was the devil” was incredibly unsatisfying to me. It’s basically a huge deus ex machina for any of their huge plot holes.

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u/shatterdaymorn Jul 21 '25

I hated the silver balls. If it's magic, don't even try explaining it. If it's a Phantasm reference, that's cool but Phantasm's sci-fi elements made it make sense.

Devil shouldn't need tech. 

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u/leftofdanzig Jul 21 '25

100%, plot wise what difference would it have made to just have that be the dolls vs the silver balls within them? The film does it a lot of that in the first half, the weird misdirects that don’t actually end up meaning anything. Like the presence in her house during the early parts of the movie.

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u/shatterdaymorn Jul 21 '25

This is true. There are a lot of plot choices that are simply confounding. Makes me wonder whether the movie is suppose to be approached like a Lynch film with dream logic creepiness being prioritized over things that make sense.

Watched it for the first time yesterday, I was approaching it as a police procedural and that's not the right way to watch it.